


the litany for ancestral spirits

by pistolgrip



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, M/M, office workers and rock stars, what could go wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 02:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistolgrip/pseuds/pistolgrip
Summary: “Thanks for coming tonight,” he says, voice hoarse and low, wrapping itself around Nezha’s throat and squeezing so tightly that all he can get out is anurkgh.





	the litany for ancestral spirits

**Author's Note:**

> wwwwwwwwwwwwwwww  
> thanks to noelle and ari for doing what you do best.  
> also i did this before olivia was a playable character. she is forever cemented in my mind as the way i've written her though. rip

_I’m too old for this,_ he thinks wearily, full of dread just from seeing the name pop up on his phone. Which is ironic, given what he’s about to go do for the rest of the night.

“Yo, Nez,” the voice says from the other end of the line. They’re already screaming, and Nezha rubs at his temples, resisting the urge to hang up immediately. Between incoherent mumbling and the fact that some of his coworkers’ voices are already audible through the fray, he gives the other three seconds before he hangs up.

One.

Two.

Three—“We’re goin’ out to drink tonight—”

“No, thank you. I already have plans.” He hangs up before his coworker has a chance to answer and tosses his phone on the bed behind him, examining himself in the mirror.

He slicks his hair back almost nervously. The concert is in a few hours and he still feels ridiculous going out on a Friday night to watch a rock star, of all things, one that’s younger than he is by more years than he cares to admit.

It was a faint curiosity at first. He’d be living under a rock—he allows himself to laugh here—to not know about Baal or anyone else from Second Summon Productions, for the matter; his daily commute is always peppered with advertisements for CDs or makeup or something or another.

Olivia introduces him, because his music taste is _old people_ and _boring_. He maintains that she just can’t appreciate a good Shostakovich night with herself and a glass of wine, but he humours her anyway.

 _Just give Baal a shot_ , she had said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. _I know you’d like his stuff._

And, infuriatingly, he does. Baal’s voice runs over him, silk floating over his skin at a long day of work, melodies lilting through the air of his apartment. Olivia’s smart; she gives him his lighter music first, because she knows his curiosity will get the better of him and look at the rest of his discography.

Because Nezha doesn’t half-ass anything, he goes through all of Baal’s discography in a weekend. He sits down, wine glass and all, and listens. And, once again, it’s infuriatingly _good_. On the surface, it seems like standard-fare popular rock. But there’s something in each song that Nezha attaches himself into, complex countermelodies weaving through the song, barely there.

His heart thunders in his chest when Olivia asks him how it was, and he quietly admits what he’s spent his weekend doing.

She laughs so hard she nearly falls off the seat she’s in. Choking on her food, she grins. “I was joking. I didn’t think you’d actually do it, you madman.”

“Since when have I not followed through on my word?” He asks, genuinely curious. He _is_ the most reliable in the office for a reason. He’s even got a certificate for it from the Christmas staff party. It’s _official_.

“Didn’t think you’d do it for something as small as this, but consider me impressed,” she says, resting her head on her hands. “So, he’s got a concert coming up—”

“Come with me, then,” he blurts. “I’m—I’m not going alone.”

“Are you kidding? Why me?” Olivia looks much less impressed this time around, as if the idea of seeing Baal work his craft live didn’t totally move her like it moved him.

“I mean… he’s kind of… your demographic,” he tries helplessly. “And I’m not.”

Olivia says nothing, only gesturing to herself.

Nezha stares for a few more seconds.

She gestures more furiously.

“I don’t think I follow.”

“I’m a _goth bitch,_ Nez.” She sighs. Always with the theatrics. “I’m not gonna pretend to be your little sister or girlfriend or whatever so you can go watch your boyfriend live in concert.”

So with no one on this godforsaken earth he can rely on, he walks this road alone. Small backpack over his shoulder packed with penlights, he marches to the train station with a determination that he carries in every aspect of his life, and he sits with his back perfectly straight in the uncomfortable train seats, and he pointedly does not look at anyone else on the train.

* * *

The closer he gets to the concert venue, the more relaxed he grows. It’s out of character for anyone he knows to be going to Baal’s show other than maybe Olivia, so he doesn’t worry about being recognized from work.

Still. He wrings his hands and watches as the train begins filling up with teenage girls, all with Baal shirts and bags and other merchandise, and he feels silly.

 _Focus_ , he thinks to himself, as if he were about to enter a business meeting and not attend a jam-packed concert to watch who Olivia calls “the love of his life”. _There is nothing to be afraid of, here,_ he thinks to himself, as if he were being called into his supervisor’s office rather than about to watch one of the most popular music performers in the past few years.

The ticket Olivia’s gotten for him is in one of the smaller cities of the tour closest to them, so the seats he gets are on the balcony, right behind the flimsy railings.

He can see every head sticking out in the pit, and his heart bursts out of his chest as he realizes—gods, he seems so close he can make eye contact with Baal himself. He’s relieved that he’s not the only man in the crowd, at least, and that to one side of him is a pillar. But he’s still surrounded by a gaggle of girls, all screaming excitedly around him.

He shuffles his backpack off and digs around for a lightstick. It doesn’t seem right to have one of these at a rock concert, but everyone else around him has one, and if Baal weren’t such a subtle musical genius Nezha would consider him an idol by performance standards, anyway.

A neverending stream of thought cross his mind as he waits for the performance to begin. He feels apprehension humming beneath his skin, mingling with pure excitement of being so out of character. Him, _Nezha_ , at a concert like this, on a Friday night, when everyone expects him to go home and look over _financial reports_ or something.

Please, he scoffs mentally, that’s a _Sunday_ activity.

The girls next to him start jostling him around, and Nezha nearly tells them to shove off, when a single note reverberates, cutting immediately through the impatient crowd with the ease of the parting of the Red Sea.

It’s embarrassing, but he can’t tell who screams louder; the entire crowd collectively or himself. His throat is going to be sore tonight, he can already tell, and when the lights flash on like a bolt of lightning, Nezha _might_ be tearing up a little bit already.

“Tremble before me...”

Some of the girls, while still screaming, turn their heads to Nezha. He turns to them in response, still screaming, pointing at the stage frantically. They wave their lightsticks harder and he does the same.

When he turns back to the stage, he—it’s a trick of the light, it’s a mistake, it’s him projecting, it’s Baal making unwavering eye contact with him, a smirk growing, sharp as the edge of a blade—

“...From the bottom of your heart.”

The line is—it’s campy, and it’s ridiculous, and it’s not very elegant. But it constricts his heart all the same, and Nezha is frozen where he is, screaming and eyes never leaving Baal’s figure on stage.

A full chord rings out this time, and then the rock star’s fingers are flying over the strings, and Nezha might actually be in love. He doesn’t know what that feels like, really, but it’s gotta be pretty damn close to _this_.

* * *

There’s an hour or so until the final train home. He doesn’t understand how his feet have carried him from the venue to the cheap, sticky plastic stool he sits on now, how he even managed to order food with how hoarse his voice is, why he’s drawn _here_ , of all places.

 _Here_ is a McDonald’s, in which he is devouring chicken nuggets that scald the top of his mouth, trying to blank out the way that Baal had seemingly sought him amongst the crowd. His gaze was fierce and electric and earth-shattering all at once, and he’s not a particularly romantic man, never quite saw it in his life trajectory to have someone else included in it.

So it’s ridiculous that he thinks he’s imagining these things, settling down with a _rock star_ of all people, the exact opposite of everything Nezha is. But they’re the same, sometimes, he likes to think; the way their eyes scorch everything in their path when determined. He doesn’t meet a lot of people like that. He _might_ be projecting a little. That’s kind of the purpose of rock star personas, he muses, so he might as well indulge in them.

Anyway—he’s starving, and the nuggets didn’t do their job, and he’s a grown fucking man with a steady salary, so he tosses his garbage out and shamelessly orders himself another twenty piece nugget meal when he sees him.

There’s a change in the air, and they’re so close that if they were to touch, Nezha’s sure a fire would start. His hair is tucked back by a headband and most of the makeup’s been wiped off his face, but Nezha knows those eyes anywhere, and when they sweep across his face he feels himself ignite.

Mouth opening and closing, he looks like a veritable idiot. Earlier today and two days from now, he was a respectable businessman, a responsible adult man who never had prospects for romance in his life, never really cared, but Baal is standing right in front of him and the ground beneath his feet wavers.

Without breaking eye contact, Baal flips open Nezha’s chicken nugget box, pops one in his mouth, and _winks._ “Thanks for coming tonight,” he says, voice hoarse and low, wrapping itself around Nezha’s throat and squeezing so tightly that all he can get out is an _urkgh._

Gods above, even his _laugh_ sounds musical. It’s ridiculous. He’s pining like a teenage girl, and Baal still looks flawless as he pulls out a sharpie and—

—starts signing the cardboard of the nuggets box. “What’s your name?”

“Yeah,” Nezha says, at a loss.

“So, ‘To my loveliest _Yeah’?”_ Baal challenges, twinkle in his eyes.

“Your—your what?” He sputters, _professionally,_ like a _professional._ As an afterthought, he adds, “Nezha?”

“My loveliest Nezha, then,” the honest-to-god _rock star_ in front of him says, like it’s no big deal, and Nezha watches him dot the rest of the greasy cardboard with hearts.

The sharpie closes with a pop, breaking Nezha out of his trance. “Can’t really hang around too long, but it was nice meeting the man practically setting me on fire with his eyes tonight.”

If he wasn’t blushing already, he’s definitely blushing now, heart beating so fast Baal can probably feel it resonating through their point of contact (the chicken nugget box). It continues thundering as Baal takes another chicken nugget, pops it in his mouth, and then strolls out of the McDonald’s like he hadn’t just changed Nezha's entire life.

There’s no one else in the fast food place but a tired looking college student, and when Nezha stares at her with a look of disbelief, she simply sends him a tired thumbs up. “Go get ‘em, tiger,” she says, because college students have no filter early in the morning at a McDonald’s, and he quickly averts her gaze.

It lands right onto the signature he holds in his hands, alongside ten messy digits he can barely make out.

 

 

 

 

 

(“Forgive me for not believing you,” Olivia snorts over lunch. “I’ll believe it when I see it."

"I brought the box with me, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, you sure did. You haven’t texted the number yet?”

“This could all be some huge prank, and maybe someone will pick up and they’ll hate me for interrupting their night with this.”

“It could be some sex line. Because he caught how thirsty you were being,” she clarifies.

“The vote of confidence as ever,” he says.

Nezha’s lived a structured life. He’s not one to be reckless. All the neighbourhood kids made fun of him for wearing his helmet while they rode their bikes. He always wore two pairs of socks at all times in case his feet got cold _or_ wet. He knows eight different languages in case he ever gets kidnapped and wakes up in another country. He’s saved all of the impulses he could have acted on in his life for this moment; Olivia stops her sentence dead cold when she realizes what he’s doing. “You’re actually?”

He frowns, trying to tune her out.

“My gods, you’re _actually,”_ she says, hurrying around the table to sit next to Nezha.

 _Hello_ , he starts writing—

“No, no no no. No. On the off chance he was being real here, you gotta be _suave._ You sound like an old man. And don’t you _dare_ capitalize,” Olivia says, snatching the phone out of his hands. Her fingers move lightning fast and she already has a decent amount of the sentence formed before Nezha comes to his wits and takes it back.

_hey. you looked amazing up on stage. how about y_

“I don’t like where this is going,” Nezha says, backspacing the entire message.

“No, you’d love it.”

“Try me.”

 _“‘how about you give me a more private performance?’_ was kind of the aim here—”

“You might be shocked to hear this, but I did not love it.”)

 

 


End file.
